Fools To Make War
by Ultrawoman
Summary: One-Shot. An old friend brings news of a mutual acquaintance's fate to Neal and sympathises over Kate's death, but did Eliot really come all this way just for those things? [Set mid-Season 2 White Collar, post-Season 3 Leverage]


**A/N: I just recently got into White Collar and so often think it could easily have crossed over with Leverage. This was my first attempt to mesh the universes, originally posted at AO3 for the birthday of my good friend, southrnbygrace.**

Fools To Make War

Neal was half convinced that the knock on his door was going to be Peter. Few people visited him as it was, and Mozzie would have already let himself in before his buddy ever got home. Neal opened the door just enough to look out, seeing the back of a head wearing long hair that was unfamiliar but a distinctive stance of the body that he knew all too well.

"Spencer?" he frowned slightly at the realisation, expecting a smile in response.

When Eliot turned around there was no happy expression, not for a moment, and when he did force a smile it was just that, forced.

"Caffrey," he nodded once. "You alone?"

Neal nodded back and ushered him inside, checking the hallway behind Eliot. There was definitely nobody else out there, which had to be a good thing. Of course the worry was that he was here at all.

"It's been a while," he said as he turned and found Eliot smiling strangely at a bottle on the table.

"Yeah, well, somebody got themselves caught chasing a chick into a storage container," he smirked the way only Eliot Spencer could.

Neal shook his head.

"Sometimes it's worth the risk."

They had both been smiling for a moment there, but talk of Kate, even in these vague terms made them serious in a second. She was gone for good, no going back. Justice needed to be done there, and it would be, it was just taking time.

"I came about Damien," said Eliot in the too-long silence that followed. "He's behind bars now, someplace he ain't never comin' out."

Neal wasn't sure what he was supposed to say about that. They both knew Damien Moreau, and not just by reputation like most of the criminal world. First hand experience made them both feel a hundred conflicting emotions when it came to that particular man. Neal fought off a shudder and pulled up a chair, gesturing for Eliot to do the same.

"Can't say it's not the best place for him," he sighed. "And yet..."

"Katie'd go crazy at me if she knew I had a hand in it," Eliot nodded, taking the offered seat, running a hand back through his hair. "Never could take in that good old Uncle Damien was... was as bad as all that."

He couldn't say the word he had planned, though a hundred good descriptors rang true in his mind - monster, villain, asshole. Damien Moreau was all those things and a good deal more. He had extinguished lives, made others hell to hold onto to, and yet he had saved Eliot long before he broke him. It hurt to think about, and Neal was one of the few that had any idea what he had been through. Maybe that was why he was really here, not to give Neal news that would have gotten to him easy enough through other means, just because he needed someone who knew all the facts to tell him he did the right thing.

"I still don't know how you came back from all that," Neal shook his head as he stared at Eliot still. "Kate didn't know everything, we all made sure of that, but you... you lived in that world."

"You got a taste yourself," Eliot reminded him sadly. "We gotta live with what we did, Neal, but that don't mean that has to be all we are."

They both ought to have known this was going to be a serious conversation the moment they looked at each other across the threshold of the apartment door. Too much had happened in their lives, way back in entwined pasts, and since then separately. Eliot wasn't sure if he really came here about Damien or if it was more about that man's niece in actuality.

"Man, I am so sorry about Kate," he said seriously. "Of all the people..."

"I know, thanks," Neal interrupted, sure he couldn't handle hearing anyone wax lyrical on the woman he loved, how innocent she had been, at least in the beginning.

She hadn't deserved her fate, and more than once Neal had realised it should have been him. He would have died to save her. He almost killed in order to find the truth of her death. Peter stopped him. Even now, Neal had to wonder if he was right to let himself be stopped at all.

"You any closer to finding out who was behind it?" asked Eliot, an edge to his voice that his friend knew well.

"Getting there," said Neal with a half-smile. "We got it covered, thanks."

If he was needed Eliot would be there, Neal knew. Though he had left guns behind, same as his buddy, he was not against using violence to bring justice. It was a different system to that which Neal had always favoured, that which Peter enforced, but should Neal ever need Eliot's expertise, he knew he was only ever a phone call away. It was good to have that safety net, even if it was never needed, never chosen.

"Working with the suit now, huh?" Eliot smirked as he leaned back in his chair. "Tough to picture."

"Says the man working for Robin Hood," Neal smirked right back at him. "It's a little weird being on the side of good for a change, isn't it? Must be causing some kind of cosmic imbalance."

"Last I saw, your cousin was balancing us out pretty well," said Eliot, eyes flashing with something dark for a moment as he got up and headed to the fridge without waiting for an invitation.

Neal frowned slightly at that. Clearly Quinn and Spencer had a run in a while back and from the way Eliot's hand strayed absently to his ribs, Neal would reckon there had been quite the altercation. That was a story for another time perhaps. It was enough to deal with Damien, Kate, and the switch of two of the world's finest criminals to the side of the law. Sure, they still bent the rules sometimes, but Eliot and Neal essentially played for the good guys now. It was a strange situation, like coming full circle in a sense, back to the almost-innocent kids they had been when they first met.

"You know I don't drink beer," Neal made as a face even as he accepted the bottle from Eliot's hand. "Peter must've left this here."

He got up to fetch himself a glass of wine as Eliot popped the top of his own beer and took a long drink.

"The Fed has decent taste in hops," he noted, leaning back in his seat comfortably.

Neal didn't answer that, amused as he was by the fact Agent Burke and Eliot Spencer had anything at all in common, even beer. Of course, now Eliot was working with Nathan Ford, famous insurance investigator, that was almost as funny.

"Do you think we're better off?" he asked, unable to help the question that spilled from his lips as he returned to the table.

Eliot smiled a little, reached out to clink his beer bottle against Neal's wine glass.

"We ain't in jail," he shrugged. "Less people gunning for either of us these days, and with people actually watching our backs. I think we're doin' okay."

Neal nodded his agreement and took a long sip from his glass. Eliot was one of the few people he could have this conversation with. His cousin, Jonah, was still straddling the line way too much, going where the money was and not caring if the guy he worked for was good or bad. Mozzie was Neal's best friend in the world, but he didn't know how he started out, he didn't know the realities of the kid that came before the master criminal, and Mozz never would allow himself to be a hundred percent on the side of the suits. Eliot was just about as morally grey as Neal could be, and trying the best he could to be as clean as it was possible to become after everything that went before.

"You sometimes wonder what life would've been like?" Neal asked then, eyes unfocused as he imagined a different world. "If we each took a different path?" he added, focusing on Eliot at the last.

The hitter stared at him a long moment. That was a hell of a question, though Eliot had considered it a hundred times before. Going back, where would he make a change? What would life have been if Nate hadn't found him? If he hadn't signed up with Moreau? Further back, if he never even joined up to the army in the first place. It wasn't worth going there, a place full of pain and regret.

"If we went back, way back to high school days, and chose a new direction," he considered aloud. "No fighting, no crime, then what? You'd be a starving artist? I'd be a master chef?" he offered as suggestions, eyebrow raised and lips quirking with a hint of a smile - it did sound kind of ridiculous.

Neal sighed into a wide smile.

"We'd be bored," he declared, at which Eliot chuckled.

"Damn bored!" he agreed easily, downing the remainder of his beer.

He was leaving now, without fuss or ceremony. He came here for this very conversation, to confirm Damien was gone and offer condolences over Kate, plus assistance if it were needed, even though he knew before he ever got here that it probably wouldn't be required. Neal needed to know he had him in his corner, and the both of them needed to be reassured that they were still the same men they always had been. The world kept on picking away, changing their paths, their lives, but they were still the same deep down, dark and shattered as their hearts sometimes seemed to be. Old friends had a habit of grounding a person, bringing them back to the place that proved they were still okay, after everything. Eliot had needed that today and now it was done he headed for the door to leave.

"Tell Parker I said hey," Neal smiled as he let Eliot out of his apartment.

"Yeah, 'cause that won't set her off on a week long jag about the good times on the streets," Eliot rolled his eyes. "You and Mozzie have a lot to answer for."

Neal chuckled at his reaction.

"She tells you all that stuff, and yet you still haven't told her exactly how we know each other, have you?" he said, gesturing between himself and Eliot.

"Nope" the hitter shook his head. "I gotta have some secrets from that crazy woman," he insisted.

"I still say you only fight so hard because you secretly like her so much," said Neal, stopping Eliot in his tracks two steps from the door.

He turned slowly and shook his head as if he felt sorry for his friend.

"Always the hopeless romantic, Caffrey," he sympathised, the words taking on new meaning when he watched Neal's face fall. "You need anything, help with the whole Kate thing..." he reiterated, even though it wasn't necessary and they both knew.

"I know," Neal nodded once.

"Any time," he nodded right back, and with a brief wave-like gesture, he was gone.

It might be years until they saw each other again, but that didn't matter. Neal smiled as he closed the door, knowing that today's visit could have so easily dissolved into a fight. Damien, Kate, Quinn, there was plenty to argue over, but at the end of the day there was enough to battle in the world without turning on each other in times of crisis.

The two of them came from the same place, connected like brothers, a bond stronger than blood could ever make. Those kind of ties could get you killed or save your life. Neal chose to believe that he and Eliot were definitely stronger for having each other's back, even at such a distance. He wandered over to the table and spotted the business card held down on the table by an empty beer bottle.

"Leverage Consulting," he smiled as he read it, then turned it over to see the hand-written scribbles on the back. "Thanks, El."

The End


End file.
